Helpdesk at Southeastern

While CampusNet is a great tool for managing the academic information and materials for your courses, Microsoft Teams will help you with class communications.  Think of it as a kind of communications side-channel.  This article will show the basics of how to manage a Team for your course as well as create as various channels to keep your course organized.  The article will point out some suggested practices for setting up your Team.

Table of Contents

1. Opening Microsoft Teams for your course

2. Setting up your class Team:

2a. Access Levels

2b. General Channel

2c. SUGGESTED: Create a "Qs and As" Channel

2d. Forum Channels

2e. Private Channels

2f. Conversation Threads

2g. Advanced Editing of Posts

3. Meetings / Recordings

4. Uploading a Recording to a CampusNet Course

5. Switching Accounts

6. Set and Communicate Expectations to Class Members

7. Syllabus Statement on Communication Method

1. Opening Microsoft Teams for your course

Using Teams on a Desktop:

• Login to office.com with your SEBTS faculty email address and password.
• In the left side menu pane, click the Teams icon to open Microsoft Teams:

This will open Teams in a new browser tab.  

[NOTE: If you would like to use the Teams app on your computer instead of viewing it on your browser, click the Download Microsoft Teams button when it appears, or go to this link:  Download Microsoft Teams

[There is also a download for a mobile Teams app for smart phones.  It is available at the Apple App Store and Android Google Play store from your device - search on Microsoft Teams].

2. Setting up your class Team

2a. ACCESS LEVELS:

Professors, assistants and graders will be automatically enrolled as Owners.  Students will be enrolled as Members.  For a list, click the 3-dot ellipsis beside the Team name and select Manage Team.  You will see the team's Owners and Members.  Click the Settings tab at the top to see the various settings for your Team for Members.  You will see checkboxes for the settings, allowing you to make some changes if desired.  It is good to look through the Member permissions section (tab at top) so you understand (and can control) the privilege settings of the Members.

2b. GENERAL CHANNEL:

On the main screen of Teams, your Channel names show up in the left menu under the Team name.  A newly created Team will only have one Channel: General (which all members of your course will see).  It is suggested that you use the General channel for announcements that your class can read.  Members can set Teams notifications for themselves so they are alerted when new posts arrive.  For details on setting Notifications, see this article:

  Teams Tips: Notifications settings & Pinning Posts

In order that all posts in this channel only come from the course's leaders, it is suggested that you set the General channel to "Only owners can post messages."   To do this, click the 3-dot ellipsis beside the channel name (General), click Manage Channel and view the Channel settings section.  Click the "Only owners can post messages" checkbox.

2c. SUGGESTED: Create a "Qs and As" Channel

Consider creating a Questions and Answers channel that the students can use to ask questions and get answers from the class leaders for things that might be of interest to the entire class.  (For private communications, a student can use the Teams Chat function separately).  To create this channel:

• Click the 3-dot ellipsis to the right of the Team name and click "Add channel."  Name it something descriptive like Qs and As to denote its purpose.  [Teams doesn't allow the ampersand character (&)].
• In the Description field type in the purpose of the channel, such as "For students to ask questions of general interest to members of the class that can be answered by the course leaders."
• In the Privacy settings, leave the setting as "Standard - Accessible to everyone on the team."
• Finally, click the checkbox at the bottom: "Automatically show this channel in everyone's channel list."
• When done, click Add.

2d. FORUM CHANNELS:

You are likely aware of the course Forum activity that's available in CampusNet (which provides many forum types and settings, including graded forums).  In case you would like to provide the class with a simpler, but more interactive discussion forum by way of Teams, create a new channel and name it something to indicate that it is a discussion forum.  Here are some considerations:

• You might want to create a Topical Forum Channel for each topic you want, which will group all discussions of a topic within its own separate forum.  (Makes more forum channels in the team, but they are shorter).  [This is our recommended method].
• Alternatively, you could create one Forum Channel and use it for all the class forum activities.  (This would make one place for students to go to see posts in date order, but it could become quite long over time). 
  • NOTE:  We do not recommend creating individual discussion channels each week of the course.  For CampusNet the weekly segments are good for organizing course materials and assignments. Course Teams are primarily for interactive discussions, so creating them weekly might cause excess complexity from the number of channels in your course Team. 

2e. PRIVATE CHANNELS:

You can create Private Channels that only certain team members can view.  If you want to create class groups for certain projects, this would be a method of allowing communication, collaboration and file sharing among the members of each group.  Here are some settings to consider in creating class groups in Teams:

• Click the 3-dot ellipsis to the right of the Team name and click "Add channel."
• Give the channel a name, which could be something like "Class Group 1, Class Group 2", etc.
• Under Privacy, select "Private - Accessible only to a specific group of people within the team."
• Click Next, then add the class members you want to put into this group.

2f. CONVERSATION THREADS:

There are two methods of posting to a Teams conversation in a Channel:

• To start a new post, click the New Conversation button at the bottom of the screen for the channel:

This will start a new thread at the bottom, and other channel members can reply to your post.  Their reply will be seen indented under your post and its other replies.

• To add your post as a reply to a previous thread, click the Reply button just below the bottom of that indented thread:

Your reply will be added to the bottom of the thread, and the thread will be moved to the bottom of the channel page.  (Later replies from you and others will appear below that).

• You may find it helpful to use the "Collapse all" button that appears after the last reply in a thread to simplify the screen as you are viewing another thread:

2g. ADVANCED EDITING OF POSTS:

A nice feature of Teams posting is its Advanced Editing capability.  When you start to compose your post or reply, just click the Format icon (the A) on the left side of the menu that appears below the field where you type your post or reply:

Above the field a menu will appear which provides you with several formatting options.  For a new post, it's good to click the "Add a subject" line to highlight the subject of your post with larger bolded type, making it easier to spot for readers looking for the post.  You will also see a menu of several text controls you can use as you need:

3. MEETINGS / RECORDINGS:

You can create a meeting (audio and/or video call) by clicking the Meeting button near the top right of a Channel.  Scheduled meetings can only be created in Standard channels (set to "Standard - Accessible to everyone on the team").  Private channels (containing only some of the team members) can only hold immediate (unscheduled) meetings.

To start a meeting, click the Meet icon in the top menu, click the "Join Now" button, and select participants or send a meeting link or notice to those you are inviting:

 If your meeting is in a channel that is for everyone on the team, you can click the down arrow to the right of the Meet button to Schedule a meeting, if desired:

If you want to put a link to the meeting on your CampusNet course, here's how: 

1. In the meeting's details screen, click the Copy Link button at the top.
2. Open the course in CampusNet and click Turn editing on.  
3. In the week section where you want to put the meeting icon, click Add an activity or resource and click URL.
4. Fill in a Name for the URL, paste the link you copied in step 1 into the External URL field, and add a Description for the meeting if desired.
5. Save the meeting by clicking Save and return to course at the bottom, and your URL icon will appear in your course.
6. If done, you can Turn editing off.

Meetings can be recorded if desired.  Once you have started the meeting, click the 3-dot ellipsis in the controls panel and select Start recording from the pull-down:

During the recording you can click the Share content icon in the top menu to share content from other windows on your computer:

4. UPLOADING A RECORDING TO A CAMPUSNET COURSE:

When you end a recorded meeting, the recording will be made available on the Channel where the meeting was started.  If you have used the meeting function to record a video or meeting you also want to make available on the course in CampusNet, you can download the video file to Panopto and place it on your course.  To do that, once the meeting has ended, do these steps:

• Click the meeting icon from the channel screen to open the video.
• Click the Download button in the top menu:

• When it is downloaded, click the File folder icon at the top of the pop-up window to open the file location.  

• The video's mp4 file can be placed on Panopto and your course by following the instructions in this article:

How to Upload an External Video File to Panopto

5. SWITCHING ACCOUNTS: 

[Useful for assistants and graders - also for students in seminary work positions]

If you are the owner of more than one SEBTS account (such as staff and student accounts), you may have the need to switch your Teams login from one account to the other. See this article for the methods for doing that on a computer and on a mobile phone:  

  For Owners of Multiple SEBTS Accounts: Switching Teams Accounts

6. FINALLY, SET AND COMMUNICATE EXPECTATIONS TO CLASS MEMBERS:

Once you have decided on how you want to set up Teams for your class, it is important to communicate your expectations to students in terms of how often they should check for Teams updates (or set up notifications for them), as well as any requirements you have for what features of Teams they should use (such as any forums, "Qs and As" channel or group channels you decide to set up).

7. SUGGESTION: SYLLABUS STATEMENT ON COMMUNICATION METHOD:  

It is strongly recommended that you put a section in the course syllabus that discusses how you want the students to handle communications with the instructor and other leaders.  Between Microsoft Teams (Channels or Chat), CampusNet / Moodle (Forums or Messaging) and email, there are several tools that can be used for communications, but when many types are used by the students in a class, it can be very cumbersome for the instructor to handle and respond.  It is best to put your required communication method(s) into the syllabus, and to discuss that with students near the start of the term.  It would also be helpful to make a statement on what is your expected typical response time to a communication from a student.